Charming, but single

Call me behind on the times, but I am just discovering MySpace. I’m not on FaceBook. I am on Friendster, but only because everybody else was doing it and I needed something to fill my time years ago while I was looking for meaningful employment. (Something I have very much of now.) I obviously knew what MySpace was before I started playing around on it a bit. I don’t live under a rock. I’d just rather my supreme dorkiness on a blog than on “social networking” Web sites. Not for me. I’m at the age that kind of missed MySpace. People I know were on Friendster, but then we grew up before MySpace really took off. And the thought of making a MySpace profile at age 26 doesn’t suit me. At all. Funky backgrounds and embedded song clips abound. I’d have to get my sister to explain how it all works to me. No thanks. (And it all feels very high school cafeteriaish. Like I should only hope that the cool kids would add me as their friend. Ew.) But I decided to cruise the MySpace a tad recently and I discovered the feature that lets you search by your high school and graduation year. And this puts Googling someone to shame. Sure, you can’t get all of the dirt Google gives you. But, you can make some pretty good assumptions based on amount of time dedicated to a profile, number of pictures uploaded, song choice and number of friends. It was revealing. Lots of ladies from my school with babies on their hips. More than I thought I’d see. A lot of shots in bars, formal wedding pictures, pictures with men strategically cropped out. It’s funny to see who knows each other and who still hangs out and who got really bad blonde highlights and fake bakes too much. This one guy I (for some reason) had crushed on sophomore year now is a “single dad.” Interesting. When I look at pictures of my classmates, some girls with whom I went to school from kindergarten through high school, it is odd to see them as adults. They look how 25 and 26-year-old women look. No more braces and bad skin and training bras. No more big bows in our hair and hot pinks backpacks and cliché formal dresses. Fewer faces round with baby fat. Ladies, we’ve grown up. I closed down the site, amused with my trip down memory lane and settled in for my in-bed night routine. Vaseline Intensive Care lotion on the elbows, knees and feet. Burt’s Bees Cuticle Cream on the nails. Whole Foods Hand Salve on the, um, hands. I ran my fingers through my still-damp hair, chapsticked my lips, took my sinus medicine and was dropping everything into my purse when I stopped. I pulled out my compact and looked. All of those pictures of my classmates got me thinking. Do I look older than I did then? I took one last look and scrunched my nose before I snapped the compact shut. I don’t think so, but I do see myself each day. I suppose that matters.